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The Great Irish Famine: identifying starvation in the tissues of victims using stable isotope analysis of bone and incremental dentine collagen
Beaumont, Julia Montgomery, Janet
Beaumont, Julia
Montgomery, Janet
Publication Date
2016-08-10
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© 2016 Beaumont, Montgomery. This is an open access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are
credited.
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2016-07-13
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Abstract
The major components of human diet both past and present may be estimated by measuring
the carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios (δ13C and δ15N) of the collagenous proteins in
bone and tooth dentine. However, the results from these two tissues differ substantially:
bone collagen records a multi-year average whilst primary dentine records and retains timebound
isotope ratios deriving from the period of tooth development. Recent studies harnessing
a sub-annual temporal sampling resolution have shed new light on the individual
dietary histories of our ancestors by identifying unexpected radical short-term dietary
changes, the duration of breastfeeding and migration where dietary change occurs, and by
raising questions regarding factors other than diet that may impact on δ13C and δ15N values.
Here we show that the dentine δ13C and δ15N profiles of workhouse inmates dating
from the Great Irish Famine of the 19th century not only record the expected dietary change
from C3 potatoes to C4 maize, but when used together they also document prolonged nutritional
and other physiological stress resulting from insufficient sustenance. In the adults, the
influence of the maize-based diet is seen in the δ13C difference between dentine (formed in
childhood) and rib (representing an average from the last few years of life). The demonstrated
effects of stress on the δ13C and δ15N values will have an impact on the interpretations
of diet in past populations even in slow-turnover tissues such as compact bone. This
technique also has applicability in the investigation of modern children subject to nutritional
distress where hair and nails are unavailable or do not record an adequate period of time.
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Citation
Beaumont J and Montgomery J (2016) The Great Irish Famine: identifying starvation in
the tissues of victims using stable isotope analysis of bone and incremental dentine collagen.
PLoS One. 11(8): e0160065.
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